Logan

As I’ve been telling everyone since the first trailer for this film came out, Hugh Jackman should be nominated for an Oscar for this one, and now after seeing it, I stand by that statement even more so.

Taking place in the near future where the X-Men are a distant memory and Professor X (Patrick Stewart) is nearly on his deathbed, Logan sees our clawed hero at a very different point in his life than what we’ve seen before. The world as we know it is a bleached out dustbowl, wrapped up in its own violence and sprinkled with hopelessness where Wolverine aka Logan (Hugh Jackman) is nothing more than a glorified chauffeur. Driving by day and drinking by night, this version of Logan is a far cry from the world saving hero of his past as he waits for the adamantium metal fused to his skeleton to slowly poison him to death and finally end his decades long struggle to survive. With Logan’s degrading healing factor barely able to stave off the inevitable for long, a new wrinkle in Logan’s life pops up in the form of an eleven-year-old named Laura (Dafne Keen), a little girl with similar mutant powers as himself, who is being hunted by the Reavers, a brutally efficient security detail that intends to re-capture her for the nefarious purposes of a project called Transigen. Now with Laura at his side and an ailing Professor X doing everything he can to save this new mutant’s future, Logan must get Laura to a safe haven called Eden before the Reavers find them, or worse, before Logan succumbs to his sickness, leaving the ones he cares about alone and unprotected, an echo of past events that he is hell-bent on avoiding.

What a ride it’s been, huh? 17 years ago we were introduced to the first live-action X-Men movie, and exactly 17 years ago we found out that Hugh Jackman was the perfect pick to play Wolverine, a role that has defined him as an actor and in the long run, will most likely never be surpassed on the silver screen if and when the character is recast. This is a testament to not only how great the character of Wolverine is, but to how great an actor Jackman is in general. To be able to elevate such a well known comic book hero from the nerd culture directly to the mainstream pop culture icon that he is today rests solely on Jackman’s shoulders, who for years put in the blood, sweat, and tears to make a character like this resonate with audiences, even through the rough times (Wolverine Origins and X-Men: The Last Stand I’m looking at you!). Now with Logan, Jackman has taken everything he’s ever put into this character and cranked it up to 11, surpassing even what I was expecting with his last outing as the character.

One of the most successful aspects of this film is rather obvious when you think about it, but always seems to get lost in the shuffle with all these spectacle driven superhero films coming out nowadays. Simply put, the filmmakers finally treated these characters as if they were real people with real consequences and real issues stemming from something other than a nefarious evildoer trying to destroy the world. Here the filmmakers make the story very personal, giving our protagonists a journey to go on that moves the story along from scene to scene anchored by the acting and drama of it all as opposed to big explosions and cool looking shots. Treating outlandish comic book heroes like real, living breathing people is the first thing that stands out in Logan and the last thing that matters as the finale draws near, something that I applaud the filmmakers for more than anything. It says a lot about these characters as a whole considering the first X-Men movie had little in the ways of character progression and dramatic moments. How far we’ve come!

A departure from all films before it, Logan was purposely shot with a hard R rating in mind, and man, does it show. Between the visceral violence at every turn, to the mature themes of death and rebirth throughout, to the endless curse words and adult content reserved for the likes of a Deadpool movie, Logan benefits the most from an R rating simply because it allows Wolverine to be himself, unabashedly and unhindered by the PG-13 ratings of the past. Heads are lopped off, blood runs like water and Professor X even has a few moments where the word “fuck” truly is the best remark to use, but that’s not the point of it all. The point is to show who Logan is at his core and to dissect him in a way that regular blockbuster superhero flicks usually only reserve for the short lulls before the next special effects driven set piece starts up again.

For years Logan has butchered his body and mind to a point where it’s all catching up to him, and for years Professor X has given his life to the idea of furthering his species in a positive way only for him to contract a debilitating brain disease with limited time to live, all of which are real problems that aren’t glossed over or swept under the rug; they’re products of what these characters have done in their pasts while at the same time embracing who they are in the present. Logan may not give a shit about Laura when he first meets her – he’s jaded and tired of saving everyone and knows what will inevitably happen in the end – but there’s still that little bit of Wolverine in him, the Wolverine that saved the world more than once with his best friends and teammates by his side, and for me, that is the reason why this film is so successful: these characters are finally fully realized, using what has came before to build upon emotions that we as audience members didn’t even know we had.

Who knew that after all of my years of seeing Patrick Stuart in his wheelchair could make me feel so sorry for him and the situation he’s in as the film opens. To see the guiding light of the entire X-Men franchise regulated to an unwell, blabbering senior citizen is one thing, but to see Logan, the strongest and most fearless member of the X-Men essentially give up and retire to a life of drinking booze to pass the time until death comes calling is such a real take on these characters that it’s almost impossible for this film not to tug at your heartstrings at one point or another. Add Laura into the mix as a perfect foil to Logan and a constant reminder of who he used to be, what he’s already gone through and who he might still become, and you have a heavy narrative that isn’t afraid to shy away from the big ideas usually only reserved for Oscar caliber dramas. I don’t want to give too much more away for risk of spoiling anything, but just know that if we keep getting these types of takes on the superhero genre, then we have yet to see the best that it has to offer.

Obviously nothing is perfect, so really quick I’d like to mention the few sore spots in the film. For Jackman’s last take on this character I did feel like the ending was a bit rushed. After the whirlwind of the first three quarters of the film, the last twenty minutes or so drags a bit, ending with a comparatively less exciting finale that spends less time on giving a proper farewell to this character than I would have liked. To that end, the final battle’s villain, who is introduced a little past the halfway mark in the story, seemed like a stretch to me. I get the idea of why they had this specific character in the film, but I can’t help but feel like they could have used another one to ram the point home regarding Logan’s mortality. Couple that with a character who acts as head of the Transigen project that literally isn’t necessary outside of being just another person to explain who/what Laura is, and I feel like this was one character too many, especially with the villain role being played so well by Boyd Holbrook as head of the Reaver squad. Take note that these nitpicks in no way affect the film in a negative way, they just seemed a bit forced and unnecessary overall.

A must see for any superhero fan or regular movie-goer alike, Logan is the sum of all of it’s past X-Men parts as it elevates its characters and Jackman’s final performance to a level seemingly only reserved for “normal” films not associated with the superhero genre. Not since The Dark Knight has a superhero movie reached such brilliant heights and succeeded in a way that makes these characters more than the comic book heroes they’re based on and more than the special effects driven popcorn entertainment they’ve turned into. Simply put, this film finally does something that I never thought I’d see again in a superhero film: it turns these outlandish and over-the-top characters into real people worth caring for.